Monday, May 20, 2013

Robert Reich on Bringing MultiNationals to Heel

Robert Reich argues there's just one way remaining to wrest domination from global capitalism.   We need multinational tax policy to halt the excesses of multinational corporatism.

As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. 

Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement that won’t allow global corporations to get away with this.
Google, Amazon, Starbucks, every other major corporation, and every big Wall Street bank, are sheltering as much of their U.S. profits abroad as they can, while telling Washington that lower corporate taxes are necessary in order to keep the U.S. “competitive.”

 Baloney. The fact is, global corporations have no allegiance to any country; their only objective is to make as much money as possible — and play off one country against another to keep their taxes down and subsidies up, thereby shifting more of the tax burden to ordinary people whose wages are already shrinking because companies are playing workers off against each other. 

Reich warns, however, that rightwing nationalist movements are spreading throughout North America and Europe, thwarting the very prospect of cooperative multinational action and thereby delivering us straight into the hands of multinational, global corporatism.

4 comments:

Lorne said...

I think it is very telling that the majority of the world's countries object to the so-called 'Tobin tax' that could be applied to all financial transactions, Mound, even though the minuscule proposed rate would raise billions for participating countries and have virtually no impact on the viability of corporations. It is, of course, at moments like this that the victory of the corporate agenda over democracy is so utterly transparent. Here is a link to illustrate: http://www.expressandstar.com/business/city-news/2013/05/15/king-attacks-tobin-tax-plans/

The Mound of Sound said...

Thanks for the link, Lorne. If we cannot find common will to act on so many of the modern, supranatural challenges I think we're hooped.

CuJoYYC said...

When did we collectively forget that corporations are sanctioned by and exist at the whim of governments?

Anonymous said...

The governments serve at the pleasure of the corporate oligarchy. That is just the way it is these days, me son.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD9Ma3KnOYg

The sooner we wake up to this fact, then the sooner we can begin to change it.